Undercover inspections of garbage dumpsters at Kaiser hospitals in the Bay Area, Central Valley and Southern California discovered a lot more than just routine trash bound for the local landfill.
They uncovered drugs, syringes and medical tubing filled with potentially pathogen-laden body fluids. There were batteries, aerosols, cleansers, sanitizers and electronic waste. And there were more than 10,000 paper records containing medical information of more than 7,700 patients.
On Friday, Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a $49 million settlement of claims brought by the state Department of Justice and prosecutors in six counties that the health care giant illegally disposed of hazardous and medical waste and patient health information.
“The illegal disposal of hazardous and medical waste puts the environment, workers and the public at risk,” Bonta said. “As a health care provider, Kaiser should know that it has specific legal obligations to properly dispose of medical waste and safeguard patients’ medical information.”
Kaiser agreed to the settlement and took immediate action to address the alleged violations, Bonta said.
California’s Hazardous Waste Control Law and Medical Waste Management Act call for those materials to be collected into marked containers and disposed at facilities licensed to safely handle and dispose of them. Laws protecting customer and medical records require that they be shredded, burned or otherwise disposed of in a way that protects privacy. But those laws add time and cost to disposal.
Kaiser Permanente said in a statement that the company learned about six years ago that “contrary to our rigorous policies and procedures, some facilities’ landfill-bound dumpsters included items that should have been disposed of differently.”
“We immediately completed an extensive auditing effort of the waste stream at our facilities and established mandatory and ongoing training to address the findings,” Kaiser’s statement said. “We take this matter extremely seriously and have taken full responsibility to acknowledge and, in cooperation with the California Attorney General and county district attorneys, correct our performance regarding landfill-bound trash where it may have fallen short of our standards.”
Kaiser added that “we are not aware of any body part being found at any time during this investigation.”
The settlement was the result of undercover inspections conducted by the district attorneys’ offices in recent years of dumpsters from 16 different Kaiser facilities. During those inspections, the district attorneys’ offices examined contents of unsecured dumpsters destined for disposal at publicly accessible landfills.
They found hundreds of items of hazardous and medical waste — aerosols, cleansers, sanitizers, batteries, electronic wastes, syringes, medical tubing with body fluids, and pharmaceuticals — and over 10,000 paper records containing the information of over 7,700 patients.
The Department of Justice joined the district attorneys and expanded the investigation of Kaiser’s disposal practices throughout the state. Kaiser hired a consultant and conducted over 1,100 trash audits at its facilities in an effort to improve compliance and also modified its procedures to improve its handling, storage and disposal of waste.
Oakland-based Kaiser operates more than 700 facilities statewide, making it the largest health care provider in California, providing health care to 8.8 million Californians, as well as members of the public who seek emergency from its facilities. Joining Bonta in announcing the settlement were district attorneys of Alameda, San Bernardino, San Francisco, San Joaquin, San Mateo and Yolo counties.
“This action will hold them accountable in such a way that we hope means it doesn’t happen again,” Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price said.
“As the largest healthcare provider in the state, Kaiser has an extraordinary responsibility to the public and to its own patients to ensure that hazardous waste, potentially infectious human waste materials, and highly sensitive patient health information are handled according to state laws and not sent to municipal landfills not equipped to handle those wastes,” said San Mateo County District Attorney Stephen M. Wagstaffe, who was joined by Price and San Francisco DA Brooke Jenkins.
The settlement includes $37.5 million in civil penalties, $4.8 million in attorneys’ fees and costs and $4.9 million primarily for environmental prosecutor training. Kaiser also must spend $3.5 million on enhanced environmental compliance measures at its California facilities over the next five years or face an additional $1.75 million penalty. And the company must retain an independent auditor to perform trash compactor and field audits at Kaiser’s California facilities over the next five years.
The justice department noted that Kaiser has been the subject of prior enforcement actions by local prosecutors for mismanagement of regulated wastes and paid $150,000 to resolve a state complaint over a delay in notifying its employees about an unencrypted USB drive left at a Santa Cruz thrift store containing more than 20,000 employee records.